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I've just completely modified my website and started to write a bilingual journal (English/French). I'll regularly post some short ideas about the way I work with Tinderbox. It's here : http://www.dominiquerenauld.net. My last post is about a recent oral presentation I had to make in a french university. My communication was called : Can a computer application sustain a clinical writing work ? and I made the hypothesis that Tbx enables to take notes on the fly while doing something else and seeing progressively an emerging structure one perhaps never thinks of.

I too have been exploring many different ways to do this kinda thing over the past few years. Currently, I am using a very odd amalgam of DevonThink, PersonalBrain, OneNote and Scrivener. Seems to work but I don't have the slick workflows and AppleScript integrations that many of the smart folks who work in this area have done.

Depending on what I am doing, I oscillate between these tools. Each has its strengths. Sometimes it creates a problem because I can't remember which tool I was working in so having things searchable by Spotlight really helps.

One thing that I generally looked for over the years is the ability to link between applications to specific items, or even better paragraphs, so that I can cross-reference easily. This works well for some things and marginally for others. OneNote does this particularly well. Until a few months ago, however, the Mac version was sufficiently hobbled that I rarely used it. Now it is a viable option. But being able to hyperlink from a DevonThink note to a OneNote paragraph to a Personal Brain thought etc has been very useful.

Scrivener works well in this environment for assembling your thoughts and notes into a manuscript.

There is one significant limitation now to many of these tools. Increasingly, I am finding that we are working in a team-based collaborative writing environment.

This introduces a whole new bunch of challenges and constraints.

OneNote, Google Docs both work really well for this, allowing simultaneous editing and excellent version control.

DevonThink, Personal Brain and Scrivener can all be shared on a central server but you have to be careful with version control and they don't really like concurrent access at all. I expect that TinderBox will fall into this category as well - I am too new to it to tell but looking at its structure and what it was designed to do, it will be too much to expect it to handle concurrent access as well.

Sorry, I may be getting too off topic now, but I do find conversations around how best to integrate these tools to be very interesting.

@David Topps I've got a similar configuration with DEVONthink, TheBrain, Tinderbox with my "One large document" and various other specialized documents (one for my writing, one for my professional "day job" work, others for specific projects and ad hoc docs), and often Evernote. I think also that there are some nice things I get from each of them that I can't quite get in one tool -- I like linking in odd non-hierarchical ways, especially my library of reading notes and so on, in TheBrain as it does seem to somehow help me to build a network of links with greater ease and awareness than other tools; DEVONthink for me is the ultimate in a massive document library organized in a hierarchical fashion, but with the advantage that it accommodates huge documents, books, videos, anything you want to throw into it so well. It also can absorb all my Evernote notes and so on. I still l find that my first stop is usually my big Tinderbox doc, though, and of course I make a lot of links between notes there as well.

One workaround I've evolved over time to address the lack of a "perfect" tool has been just designing a workflow for using these tools together. For instance, having some key attributes, such as tags, which I use if the note should be duplicated in one of the other tools somewhere. So I might start putting some reading notes in Tinderbox, but then if tagged, I might copy the note or at least make a parallel note in my TheBrain under, say, list of books read this year, lists of authors, which is a hierarchical list organized along something like the Bloom "Western Canon" outline, linking then to another thought such as the topic the book is about (e.g., hypnosis). That same note might also fit in my professional Tinderbox if, like at the moment, the book is on a psychology topic.

I don't consider this an ideal solution, but it has some advantages including forcing a level of engagement with some notes that helps me make better mental links over time. It at least gives me (if no one else the illusion of becoming both more "organized" and "smarter." Seems to help me think things through, make more connections of different sorts, and meanwhile builds a huge network of information and ideas over the years.

I guess this is just a long way of saying that sometimes, for me, it's not the tool but the workflow process as it has evolved, that seems to be the helpful thing.

I've just posted a new video about a short trick to use Tinderbox with Alfred. I was searching for a way to use a Tinderbox shortcut as I do when I take a note with Omnifocus or DEVONthink Pro quick entry and I customized a very little workflow (two actions) with Alfred powerpack. I have just to press cmd + enter and then naturally press enter command to type the title of my note in map view. Maybe is there a way to do this using the system preferences, but I didn't find it. So, I have a new workflow wherein DEVONthink Pro quick entry allows me easily to archive web pages and Tinderbox is my inbox. Happy! The video is here:http://www.dominiquerenauld.net/journal/22/8/2016/taking-notes-with-alfred-and-t...

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Dear WAKAMATSU,That link leads to my ancient site, whose blog articles were written in French and this site is no more open. But if you want to read in French that long article about Ulysses and Tinderbox, tell me and and I'll send it to you.